bake: strawberry puffs

I'd had puff pastry in my freezer and was longing to bake some kind of dessert with it. I also had a pint of strawberries that I couldn't finish in time before them spoiling. Eureka! Homemade strawberry pop-tarts, and if that's a trademarked name, then strawberry puffs. There was no time last weekend to actually bake, and so I put the puff pastry back and the macerated (meaning broken down or mashed into smaller chunks with a bit of sugar) and cooked strawberries into the refrigerator to make the next weekend.

Enter Sunday morning. I made an egg wash, meaning I stirred one egg with a little bit of water, and also took out the cooked strawberries, thawed puff pastry, and just in case, a jar of strawberry preserves.  I brushed the edges of two slices of puff pastry with the egg wash and then spooned the cooked strawberries in the middle of one slice of puff pastry.

And then place the top of the egg washed puff pastry without strawberry filling over the puff pastry slice with filling. Then crimp the edges together with a fork and cut slits (I cut a cross) in the top for steam to escape.

I also turned over the raw pop tarts to crimp the edges on the other side. I noticed that I had a lot of strawberry filling for the rest of the puff pastry and thought I'd better increase the amount of strawberry filling I was putting inside the puffs.

For shits and giggles, I cut two slices of puff pastry into four smaller squares. Yeah I was a messy baker this morning.

I laid all the unbaked strawberry puffs onto a sheet pan lined with parchment paper and baked in a 400 degree oven, but realized 5 minutes into the baking that it should be a 375 degree oven. I lowered the temp and set the timer for 15 minutes. However, the undersides were not golden brown crusts, and so I flipped the pastries over and baked another 5 minutes.                           

I likey! And never mind the last one which I overfilled because I didn't want to waste--that pastry will be mine. There was also instructions for icing. Again I made this a no-recipe recipe. I put maybe a scant half cup of powdered sugar and a tablespoon of milk and one eighth of a teaspoon of almond extract into my mixing cup. And then just stirred.       

I should have used less liquid in the icing.

But the neighbors declared them scrumptious.